Recent headlines insist that Stephen Bannon, Donald Trump’s choice for a top advisory post, is a hate-filled ogre. Rallies and demonstrations throughout the nation describe him with explosively charged rhetoric. The demonstrators also don’t accept the Trump victory on November 8th while claiming that the President-elect is a racist and sexist hater of gays, Muslims, and immigrants.

Let’s go back a few years and recall there were no protesters when the hate-filled outbursts of Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s became known. Wright was the pastor of a Chicago church where Barack Obama could be found for many years. He and Michelle were so close to Wright that they chose him to perform their marriage ceremony. But a video of Wright captured him exhorting his compliant congregation to join him in proclaiming “God d–n America.”

Obama wasn’t in attendance when Wright’s hateful outburst was caught on film. How many other times the left-leaning pastor called on his parishioners to condemn America isn’t known. But the acceptance by his congregation of his strident condemnation of our nation surely indicated that his call for the Almighty to destroy our country wasn’t an out-of-the-ordinary occurrence.

When that video surfaced, Obama was just a candidate seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination. He quickly responded in a televised speech in which he sought to separate himself from the angry pastor. But there were no protests or riots because of the denied connection between the candidate and his pastor.

Nor did either the mass media report or the protesting minorities make note of Obama’s close relationship with Saul Alinsky, the so-called community organizer who saluted “Lucifer” and taught Marxist political tactics. The mass media would have eagerly pounced on most others for anything remotely equivalent in their background.

Then, there’s the numerous unanswered questions about the Obama birth certificate. Yes, Trump eventually accepted it as legitimate and sought to convert the matter to non-issue status. But questions that the media should have asked, but never did, remain.

For instance, the birth certificate released by the White House after years of ignoring the matter states that the race of Obama’s father was “African.” But in 1961, blacks were termed Negroes and the term African-American was used by no one. This birth certificate lists the site of Obama’s birth as “Kapi’olani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital.” But in 1961, there was no such institution by that name. A merger of the two separate facilities didn’t occur until 1978 when the hospitals were combined and the new name created. Further, the birth certificate states that Obama’s father was born in “Kenya, East Africa.” But Kenya didn’t exist in 1961. Later formed as an independent nation (in 1963), the region was known in 1961 as “British East Africa Protectorate.”

We point out these remarkable inconsistencies, not to insist that Barack Obama was not a “natural born citizen” but to provide more evidence of the mass media’s willingness to overlook important information that might unfavorably impact one of its favorites. Had Donald Trump, or any Republican for that matter, produced a similarly flawed document or been credibly linked in a relationship with an anti-American like Jeremiah Wright, you can bet the angry youngsters clogging the streets and the liberals and leftists who dominate the Fourth Estate would never let such “juicy” information die.

Those who protest Trump’s victory and media stars who refuse to ask meaningful questions about Obama’s legitimacy show their bias. But the Trump victory indicates that their hold on the thinking of millions of Americans is slipping away. And that’s very good news.

Mr. McManus served in the U.S. Marine Corps in the late 1950s and joined the staff of The John Birch Society in August 1966. He has served various roles for the organization including Field Coordinator, Director of Public Affairs, and President. Mr. McManus has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs and is also author of a number of educational DVDs and books. Now President Emeritus, he continues his involvement with the Society through public speaking and writing for this blog, the JBS Bulletin, and The New American.